


The Worst Birthday

by languageofthebeasts



Category: The Arcana (Visual Novel)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Implied deals with Volta/Vulgora/Valdemar but those are headcanons, Mentions of Morga Julian Nadia and Valerius, Pre-Canon, prose
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-26
Updated: 2019-10-26
Packaged: 2021-01-03 11:30:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21178709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/languageofthebeasts/pseuds/languageofthebeasts
Summary: It always begins with a birthday.





	The Worst Birthday

**Author's Note:**

> It doesn't end with a birthday.

It always begins with a deal.   
Cold snow underfoot. The darkness of the night. Trees that look less human the deeper you go in.  
It always begins on the eve of your birthday. It begins with desire. It begins with hunger.  
It begins with something terrible. It drips onto your flesh  
It isn’t blood. Not yet.  
Your arms are heavy when you lift them.  
You make the deal.

It always begins with running.  
It begins with a burning in your legs and the painful howl of your stomach and the wind  
There is a falcon overhead. A hunter behind you and darkness in front.   
You think of bears of caves and of screaming.   
It always begins after your father’s death.  
Snow turns to tundra turns to sand turns to earth.  
You don’t how long you have run,  
Or how long you have been so desperate.  
One day the hunter stops following.  
You breathe at last.   
The hunger does not end.

It always begins with a choice.  
A deal you don’t have to make.   
A job you don’t have to accept. Lucrative but so enticing. But you were promised power, wealth, glory.  
Glory, glory, glory.  
You like playing the odds.  
It always begins with that searing pain in your left. You see your doctor before you black out. He is a shock of red in your periphery before everything goes red. The world fades to black.   
It doesn’t end yet, in fact it has only just begun.  
It begins with emptiness, a phantom sensation where flesh once was.  
There is blood, it is your blood this time.  
There is no heaviness to lift.   
You are off balance.

It always begins with a dying count.   
A crumbling city with no heir left to rule. Floods. Fires. The promise of pestilence. An arena that screams for blood.  
You accept centuries of neglect.  
You take its blood into your remaining hand.  
You enjoy taking chances. You take the offer.  
The old man’s arms tremble as he names you heir.  
The court watches, in awe or in shock?  
It is all the same to you.   
You take the throne.   
You inherit a city on the verge of collapse.

It always begins with two fools.  
They make choices they don’t have to make. They accept jobs they don’t have to accept. It is lucrative but enticing enough.   
You will have gold; you will have glory.  
You are at balance again,  
You are a God among the ruins of a once great city.

It always begins with a princess desperate to prove herself.  
A party. Wine. Gold. Silk. Rubies.   
It begins with a question, a proposal. One she does not have to accept,  
But you are both desperate enough  
And you are both drunk enough.  
She is everything you once were,  
And you are everything she will come to loathe.  
But you do not know that yet.  
You are Gods among the rubble.

It always begins with conquest.  
It begins with a deal they will not accept.  
They paint you victorious and red  
The beetles come anyway, and your days are numbered.   
You run, you run.   
That’s what you have done for so long.  
Vesuvia stands for now, and you are safe among your paintings and statues.  
Your arenas thirst for blood and you give it to them.   
The scuttling follows.

It always begins with pestilence.  
The court falls almost entirely.  
Your deals have caught up to you.  
They wait, in hunger.   
Your people are famished, and they are dying of disease.  
But you survive, golden, beautiful.  
The ashes do not float up to you in your palace. 

It always begins with the coughing.  
You are alone in your bed for once,  
For once you are afraid. There is blood in your mouth and you down it with wine.  
You cannot accept it. Not yet.  
Not now.  
You were meant to be a god.  
The man in your bed pretends not to notice the red of your eyes.  
Your delusions are allowed to continue.  
Your body burns from the inside out.

It always begins with a birthday.  
The festivities continue in your absence.  
You are a shadow of the god you once were  
And you can smell the demons waiting.  
You burn.  
It is not the beautiful agony you had bargained for.  
This is how it ends, you think, with fire and blood.  
This is how it should end.  
It doesn't end with a birthday.

**Author's Note:**

> So my HCs that I mention in the tags is that Lucio's deals with the courtiers happen in a way where he bargains with Vlastomil/Pestilence for the illness that kills his father but because he fails, the plague happens. Then he bargains with Volta/Famine while on the run and hungry and desperate. Then the bargain with Vulgora/War happens during his conquering days, his deal with Valdemar is the last one he makes. I know they aren't all the same kinds of entities but it kind of works for this.


End file.
